Alabama's Nick Saban favors plus-one playoff

It's the 360-plus million dollar question and everyone with any ties to college football has been asked it one time or another over the past several weeks: What are your thoughts on a playoff?

Alabama coach Nick Saban, one of the elite leaders on college football, weighed in on the issue during a booster club visit to Orlando last week.

"I've always been for plus one," said Saban, a 60-year-old coach who has won three national titles. "I think one of the most difficult things in having a large playoff is how do you play the games? How do you have finals? How do you implement that relative to what our players already [do]? I know they have one in [Division] I-AA and Division II, Division III and all that. But I think that would be a little more difficult, especially because the college bowl system provides a lot of self-gratification for a lot of young people in college football."

Saban is just the latest high-profile coach to come out in support of a playoff system.

Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and Florida's Will Muschamp have also voiced their backing of a playoff system that keeps the bowl system intact.

"If we played another game, we'd always be able to incorporate the best teams," Saban added. "So you would at least get the best teams and they would play. How they implement that, if they use the bowl system, I think that would be great. But I am not for extending the system into the next semester. I don't think that's fair to college football players. But I think that'd be great for the fans and I think that's what they want."

Conference officials settled on the idea of a four-team playoff system to replace the current BCS format in late April but what sort of playoff model has been fiercely debated in the days since the announcement.

Early last week, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany told CBSSports.com that one proposal being considered is one in which the four-teams in the playoff would be comprised of conference winners ranked in the top six nationally.

That's an idea that Saban isn't a big fan of.

"The thing I don't want is all this stuff about you got to be a conference champion, then you're not going to get the best four teams," the legendary coach said. "Because some leagues, there's not parity and some have really good people at the top and they should have an opportunity to play in a game whether they win a championship or not."

Officials will reconvene in Chicago in late June with BCS executive director Bill Hancock telling reporters that he would like to take a final proposal to the NCAA Presidential Oversight Committee by July 4.

According to Saban, members of the Southeastern Conference will meet again after Memorial Day during the SEC spring meetings to discuss the myriad of proposals on the table. He said he believes whatever decision is made, it will be the right one.

"I feel confident that our leadership in the SEC with Mike Slive and his staff of people," Saban added. "They probably know more about this than most of us coaches and they would do a really good job of representing and presenting us with some ideas that hopefully we get a chance to have some input in when the time comes."

mmurschel@tribune.com

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